96 KILVERT'S DIARY

96 [De£

square. 'Now,' he said, 'this is very inconsistent. Your features are
round and you want your beard cut square/ 'Still,' I said, 'I prefer
it.' My Mother had given me some money, five shillings, to buy a
book as a birthday present. Part of it, 2/-, I spent on buying a copv
of Faust, an English translation, one of Tischendorf 's series, at the
Foregate St. Station, as a remembrance of Worcester.

Saturday, 17 December

That liar and thief of the world Sarah Thomas, Mrs. Chaloner's
•servant, is gone. The evening she went no one knew what had be-
come of her all the early part of the night. Probably she passed it
under some hedge and not alone. At a quarter before midnight she
asked for a bed which Mrs. Price very properly refused. I hope she
has cleared out of this village. Beast.

Sunday, 18 December

I could not get out of my head a horrible story Wall was telling
me this evening of a suicide committed by an old man named
William Jones in the old barn, now pulled down, which stood close
"by Chapel Dingle cottage. The old man used to work for Dyke at
Llwyn Gwillim, but becoming helpless and infirm he was put upon
the parish. It is supposed that this preyed upon his mind. He was a
very good faithful servant and a man of a sturdy independent
-character who could not bear the idea of not being able any longer
to maintain himself and hated to be supported by the parish. *I used
to bake his bit of meat for him that was allowed him by the Board',
said Mr. Wall, 'for Rachel Williams with whom he was lodging at
the Chapel Dingle was out at work every day. My baking day was
mostly Friday. On Friday he had been up with his meat and I did
not notice anything more than usual about him. At noon on
Saturday Rachel's step-children missed him. They had seen him go
towards the bam some hours before. They went and looked through
a lancet hole of the old building and saw the old man lying on the
floor, and they came back saying that old William Jones was lying
in the barn dead. The master and I went down to the barn. Inside
the bam there was a door leading into a beast house. The old man
could not shut the barn door from the inside, so he had gone into the
beast house and had shut himself in. Then he had leaned his stick up
in a comer quite tidy. He had then taken out a razor, unsheathed it,
putting the sheath back into his pocket. He was lying on the floor